Back in my olden days of “Renewables are Going To Save Us” living, I gave everyone I knew reusable coffee mugs. Along with the gift came a nudge to “Just bring it to Starbucks, instead of using a disposable cup. It’s easy!” I’d also share this:
What if every day all the disposable cups used at each Starbucks location ended up on the floor? How many days would it take before you could no longer wade through the cups to get your coffee? How many days before the door would no longer be able to open?
Around the same time, one of my sons came home excitedly from elementary school with a letter from the teacher, and asked me to please buy Capri Sun juice drinks (ya know, the ones in the foil package with the plastic straw wrapped in plastic…something I never bought). The teacher was collecting the used Capri Sun packets to send to a company in exchange for some classroom supplies. Students bringing in the most would get a prize. The company wanted the packets to turn them into backpacks, tote bags, and who knows what else. “I’m helping the planet, Mom! Can we get some, pleeaase?”
Pretty sure he didn’t like my answer.
“Well, here’s the thing, Colin. The problem isn’t what to do with the Capri Sun packets. It’s that we have the packets in the first place.” Followed by a lesson in growth economics. (Fun mom, eh?)
Recently, while chatting with a friend sharing memories of our grandmothers, she offered that hers had never learned how to read and write. “Can you imagine what life would be like never even knowing how to read and write?” she asked me.
My first feral answer that popped out (and not the one she expected) “Yes! I can, and it would be amazing!” I may have even surprised myself with how quickly that flowed out of me.
I followed that up with an explanation that of course in this industrialized civilization it would for sure be very challenging. But WOW, how incredible to imagine being able to experience life here on this planet not surrounded and buried by written words! (And this coming from someone who has always enjoyed writing and was a career language arts teacher…obvious irony of using written words here noted.)
These days my lessons are most taken from witnessing the wild world in action. Their young’s feet are not shoved into shoes when learning to walk. Their juvenile speech is not forced into boxes of symbols and letters. No written words are needed to engage freely with daily tasks. No reading is required to participate wholly in fully living with each other.
As Jordan Perry says, “A world without hospitals isn’t a world without health care. A world without schools isn’t a world without knowledge. A world without military isn’t a world without security. And a world without written language, isn’t a world without communication.”
What if written words were disposable Starbucks cups and Capri Sun packets, each carrying that much weight? How soon would they pile up in unmanageable ways? How soon before we would realize the problem isn’t what to do with all the words, it’s that we have them all in the first place?
Homo sapiens are on the brink of very possible extinction on this planet. How many more words do we really need to also pile up in the trash heap?
Maybe just four, just in case: Don’t Do Civilization Again